the pre-race meal thing took me way too long to figure out

Right so I've been doing a long run debrief this week because my 18-miler on Sunday felt completely different to the one two weeks ago and honestly the only variable I can point to is what I ate the night before and morning of. Two weeks ago I had pasta, fine, classic, but I also had way too much of it and woke up feeling heavy. Sunday I kept it simpler — rice, some chicken, nothing dramatic — and my splits from km 8 onwards were noticeably more consistent. I'm not saying it's purely that, could be the weather, could be sleep, but I've started logging meals alongside my Garmin data and the pattern is kind of hard to ignore. Morning of I had oats about 90 mins before, matcha instead of coffee because coffee before long efforts still makes me anxious honestly, and just... felt steadier. No side stitch which I've been getting a lot lately. Aye it's boring to track this stuff but I think pre-run nutrition was genuinely the last piece I wasn't taking seriously. Pacing, strength work, sleep — I had those more or less dialled in. Food felt like overthinking it. Turns out it wasn't.